Horns

Rating this book put me in a bit of a quandary. The characterizations, the craft, and the storytelling were all very, very fine. I was especially impressed by how deeply and with what subtlety Hill got into his odd characters' heads.

At the same time, portions (especially the "fire sermon" section) were unorthodox to say the least. The whole thing was steeped in an angry young man's philosophy, a way of looking at things extremely foreign to me. It pushed me off balance, made me feel spiritually queasy if that makes sense. I'm more of a Virginia Woolf man, an Edith Wharton man, a Charles de Lint man; so I was a bit off my beaten path, that's for sure.

I wasn't offended so much as adversely affected. After reading, I stumbled outside in show more a dark veil; instead of seeing the light pulsing inside the strangers I met, I felt wrapped in a sickly, churning darkness - a metaphorical darkness that is, since I'm not and never have been schizophrenic. But that's how the book made me feel, disturbed and wrong-footed, a feeling I definitely don't like. Whenever I put the book down, I wasn't quite fit for human contact, not wholly myself, until at least an hour after reading. And yet ....

Despite being an extremely hostile natural audience for the book, chapter by chapter, I felt my respect build for Hill's technique. Many of the twists in the story were jaw dropping, but not one felt cheap. Each was deeply steeped in the truth of the characters (a subtle, deep down, whole truth), and regardless of my shock, each felt right. The book grabbed me by the throat. I couldn't stop reading. I was fascinated despite my queasiness, and I had to find out what happened next. I definitely believed in these characters, was invested in them. And the gradual unveiling of the cause of Ig's horns was another pleasant surprise, satisfying on many levels, successfully mixing the prickle of genuine mystery with an internal consistency and a deeply satisfying sense of revelation.

So how the heck to rate it? For me, the craft was leaps and bounds better than Stephen King; it was unique and astoundingly capable, perhaps even worth 5 stars. But some of the philosophy at the heart of the story was immature at best, for me quite off-putting. I really did enjoy reading the book though, despite the fact that I didn't like the way it made me feel. Also, the author's ability to snake charm such a naturally hostile audience as I was into the narrator's perspective was a feat that deserved reward. In the end, I balanced everything out and gave it 4 stars.

A weird, weird book. Also a very good one but definitely not recommended for all. show less

Ignatius Perrish wakes up after a drunken night with honest-to-goodness horns growing out of his head. At first, he thinks he's just going crazy. But as he ventures out into the day, he finds that other people can see them too; they're just too busy telling him their deepest, darkest secrets to really comment on them. Oh, and if they know him, they're telling him exactly what they think of him. That would be bad enough for anyone, but when you've been (falsely) accused of raping and murdering your girlfriend and the whole town thinks your famous father got you off, what people have to say to you gets real vicious real fast.

I hate the name Ignatius. Even shortened to Ig or, heaven forbid, Iggy, it's just awful. And then to pair it with show more Perrish. I couldn't help but think of Iggy Pop.

That aside...

This was scary but not in a horror-y way. Well, not for the most part. There's the thing with the horns, but the real scare here is how this kind of thing happens every day. Again, not the horns, but the rape/murder of an innocent girl. And we always think it's the significant other who did it. Sure, most of the time it is, but what living hell the innocent ones must go through. Not only have they lost a loved one but they've been accused of doing it as well. *Shudder* Ig shows us exactly how little it feels that life is worth living after that.

What makes this so hard to read is that Ig was about to have it all. He and Merrin have a fantastic relationship. They're high school sweethearts who look like they're really going to live the happily ever after. They're both pursuing their career dreams and then they're not. And that is what makes this book so very difficult to read.

The horror-y bit that really, really got to me was the snakes. Oh my goodness, the snakes. I wasn't sure that I was going to be able to finish. I would say I have snake-a-phobia (Ophidiophobia. Don't say you've never learned anything from my reviews). Maybe I should have expected that this guy, who is becoming more devil-like by the day, would develop an affinity for snakes. I didn't. I'm sitting here shuddering just thinking about it. I would think, "Okay, I've got to be through it," and there would be more. When it really did seem safe, here the snakes came again and they were so, so, so bad. *trying not to think about it*

I'm also wondering if all boys really get up to the crazy crap that Hill and dad King write about. I mean, these guys get up to some insanely dangerous, destructive things. Did I have my head in the sand around the boy cousins I grew up with? They did some stupid things, but nothing like this.

I really liked that I was never entirely sure what to think of Ig. He says right up front that he didn't kill Merrin, and I believed him, but there's got to be a reason for the horns. I was rooting for him, but I was still questioning him a little. He can influence people and make them act on their darkest desires, and he does that a few times. What a heady, easily-addicting power to have. Was he going to come down for good or evil? I mean, c'mon, he has devil horns. He can't really be the good guy. Can he?

Hill slowly makes us question our perceptions, i.e. what looks evil vs what truly is evil. They are not always the same and yet we insist on conflating the two. Horror with a philosophical bent. Who knew such a thing existed?

Oh, last little tidbit--I loved that Judas Coyne was mentioned in this book! Will we someday need a concordance for Hill's work as well?

I prefer Heart-Shaped Box, but this was still another very strong horror novel from Joe Hill. I will definitely continue to follow his work. show less

Ig Parrish wakes up one morning with literal horns on his head. He soon discovers that these horns cause other people around him to confess their darkest secrets to him -- and for many, that includes a harbored resentment towards him because they think he got away with the murder of his girlfriend a year ago.

This book was a real rollercoaster ride of a read. The initial abrupt introduction to Ig waking up from a bender with devil's horns and no real explanation for them felt so Kafkaesque -- one could feel a kinship in those early moments between Ig and Gregor Samsa discovering he was a giant cockroach one morning. It was an interesting premise to start with for sure and I was curious to see where it was going to go.

Then the book show more started to fall out of grace with me for a bit. I know in retrospect it was slowly setting the stage of this town and its people, but there were just so many instances of Ig running into folks and finding out all of them were horrid. In some cases, they were significant people in his life (e.g., his mother) or other cases the characters themselves weren't wildly important to him but their presence informed the reader about something significant (e.g., we find out a lot about Merrin's murder via an early conversation between Ig and a priest). But we also just get some completely random people who don't really add much to the story beyond beating in the idea that apparently every single person in this town is an awful, awful human being at heart. Pretty depressing, unrelenting, and frankly a bit boring and repetitive after a while.

But then Hill starts taking us backwards in time to find out more about how some of the story's most important characters first met as children/young teens and how those relationships grew. Because at that point many super relevant facts from the "future" have been laid bare, there are so many layers and ironies to these early days. I really found myself much more riveted here, wondering how these past days were going to lead to such a bleak present.

The book next veers off into letting us see through the eyes of Ig's friend Lee, who we by now have seen mature from a minor through adulthood, but entirely from Ig's biased perspective as a close friend. Savvy readers are not as easily fooled as Ig even in those earlier bits, but here we really truly see the depravity of Lee. He is almost textbook pathological, so it's a little on the nose, but it's still a more attention-grabbing part of the book and is ultimately heart-wrenching when it comes to the pivotal scene when Lee rapes and murders Merrin, with the reader's heart breaking for that poor girl.

After this, I was wondering how there was still so much book left. The answer is that it partially just kind of devolves for a bit? Ig just acts increasingly more unhinged; although understandable, it's not particularly compelling to read about in my opinion. Eventually all this flailing about starts to lead towards a conclusion, which does come back around and tie in some elements we learned about in flashbacks so it was satisfying in its own way. The ending is haunting and oddly beautiful in its dark imagery.

That all being said, I think I enjoyed this book overall (if "enjoyed" can really be a word you can apply towards such subject matter), but it felt like it could have been tightened up in a little bit in places so that it was more compact. It was already a pretty impactful story, but I think reducing some of the less relevant parts would have made it even more so.

For the audiobook listener, narrator Fred Berman did such a wonderful job giving each and every character a distinct voice, and overall just adding a lot of life into the story. show less

So - here we have a book about a dead beat man whose girlfriend died a grizzly murder. Ig is the prime suspect, but the evidence wasn't there to convict him. So, on the anniversary of Merrin's Death, Ig gets drunk, and does something. What that something is, we don't know. But, Ig wakes up with a new set of horns as well as the ability to "hear" a person's darkest thoughts, and the ability to push them to act on it. This gives Ig the ability to track down Merrin's Killer, but at a cost...

The book was creepy. Not in a traditional horror story way, but in a psychology in your head type book. Its creepy, and very disturbing. At times, not an easy read. At other times, darkly funny. I'm glad I read it... it gave me a lot to think about - show more specifically what is evil. But, I don't think this is a book for everybody. show less

Joe Hill's second novel (after 'Heart-Shaped Box') was worth the wait. It has been one year since the brutal rape and murder of Ignatius (Ig) Parrish's high school sweetheart Merrin. Not only does he mourn her death, Ig himself was the only suspect in her murder and, though he was never convicted, the whole town is convinced he did it. In his anger and rage, he goes on a drinking binge at the site of Merrin's death, cursing God.

He wakes up the next morning to discover that a pair of horns have sprouted on his forehead. Convinced he's hallucinating, Ig heads for the hospital. But it isn't long before he realizes that the horns are all too real, and, in addition, seem to have a strange effect on anyone who sees them: everyone Ig meets is show more suddenly compelled to confess all of their darkest thoughts and desires to him, and a mere word of encouragement from him can push them into actions they'd never otherwise take. In addition, any physical contact brings knowledge of their cruelest sins flooding into Ig's mind. Now, in a lot of ways, this is a curse...no one really needs to know that his own grandmother is so ashamed of her murderer grandson that she wishes he were dead, do they? However, for Ig, it provides an unexpected benefit. Using his new abilities, he can finally track down the one who really killed Merrin and take his own special revenge on the twisted killer.

Combining skillfully shaped flashbacks with Ig's often brutal current-day quest, 'Horns' casts new light on the true nature of good, evil, and the places they occupy within the human mind. show less

For those readers who enjoyed Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box, Horns is just as enjoyable, although it evokes an entirely different form of fear than his first novel. Make no mistake, it remains an intense psychological thriller, but the ghosts going bump in the night are different, more realistic and frankly, more interesting than scary. Rather than facing murderous ghosts, this time around the bad guys are more mental, more personal.

Make no mistake, Ig is not presented in the most sympathetic of lights. Yet, given everything he has faced and everything he discovers, the reader cannot help but cheer him on as he discovers his strength of character and finally faces his torturers. For, tortured Ig definitely is. He not only faces the show more withdrawal of friends and family members, he faces his own self-disgust at his own inaction after Merrin's death.

In a cruel twist of fate, Ig's new horns and attached powers inform Ig that he is not the only one suffering on the inside. Everyone has a demon or two (or three) inside that s/he keeps hidden or negates through self-control. Frankly put, one never knows what is truly going on inside someone else. The question then remains, just what is supposed to happen if or when those secrets are learned by someone else?

Ig's fall from grace, if you will, presents an intense theological debate on suffering and the different degrees and/or forms of evil. Does one's thoughts make them evil? If a person never acts on evil intentions, does that make him or her evil by default? Why does a Higher Power, no matter what form it takes, allow us to suffer such depths of despair? Questions of this ilk abound throughout the novel, with Mr. Hill presenting his opinions while leaving room for each reader to form his or her own.

As Ig discovers through the learning curve associated with using his new powers, what happens when one discovers a person's true nature? Horns is a fascinating answer to that question, while raising many additional questions the reader must answer. The result is a novel that scares with the possibilities of truth rather than from spooky creatures or other, more conventional scare tactics. show less

Okay here's the deal: I almost gave this five stars except for one shaky plot device which marred the profundity of the ending. A lot of people give this lower ratings, but I have some personal reasons why this novel touched me. When I was 22 I knew a young woman, 19, not really well but well enough, who was abducted, sexually assaulted (raped!), and brutally murdered. She had a boyfriend, she was a university student, she had a part-time job to see her through school, and she was an only child, she was intelligent, pretty, laughed, and had a nice smile - I knew her father as well, worked with him. This was not MY girlfriend however ol' Joe nails the gut-churning feeling of what this is like to those that live through such a tragedy. I show more can see Ig wanting revenge so bad he would sell his soul, even if only inadvertently. While I was reading, especially the first half of this book, I didn't want to eat, it bothered my sleep, I couldn't concentrate. I didn't even want to keep reading. It totally depressed me. This is what good writing does.

Ever think about how people that have had a close one murdered can't play Clue, hate watching CSI, don't like Agatha Christie or Alfred Hitchcock? This is how Horns made me feel - like I didn't want to relive something or be reminded of it.

Onward to the weak and unnecessary plot device: Merrin was going to die anyway and she really wanted to go quick. What? Joe, why ruin a perfect thing? Now you have inserted some sort of meaning into what needed to be kept beyond understanding and meaningless. All of this to introduce Merrin's "last testament" letter of how she really loved Ig, and now he knows it, and she REALLY didn't want to try other relationships but wanted him to just be happy, etc. BS! The realism of Ig/Merrin's shaky last days as they both were beginning to move on to other things besides a high school romance makes the tragedy of how the argument/abandonment/rape/murder happens that much more tragic and profound but only if they never communicate again after he leaves her at the restaurant. Why ruin it? Now you tell me she was gonna die anyway? Don't cheat me of my righteous pathos Joe! Don't pull an [a:Erich Segal|15516|Erich Segal|http://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1202419115p2/15516.jpg] on me!

I have a love/hate relationship with this thing. I thought it was a pretty good story. As I've said, the back story really hit me hard and I am pretty thick skinned. I think Hill gets this so right it's scary. King can go to the same places, sometimes. I can't say I enjoyed the book but it's pretty good writing nonetheless. Except for that breast cancer plot thing... show less